Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

• Summary
• Downloads
• Explanatory Notes
• Related Information
• Past & Future Releases

The annual National Prisoner Census, conducted on the night of 30 June, counts all adult offenders who are held in custody in gazetted Australian prisons, including periodic detainees in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. The Prisoner Census provides a snapshot of the number of persons in prison, and is not representative of the flow of prisoners. The majority of prisoners in the Prisoner Census are serving long sentences for relatively serious offences, but the flow of offenders in and out of prisons consists primarily of persons serving short sentences for relatively minor offences.

Based on the results of Prisoner Censuses, the total prison population in Australia increased by 52% from 14,305 in 1990 to 21,714 in 2000. There were 20,329 male prisoners on 30 June 2000, comprising 94% of the total prisoner population (table 11.21). The average age of prisoners in Australia was 33 years for males and 32 years for females. The majority of prisoners in Australia are young adult males, just over 56% of all prisoners being males aged between 20 and 35 years.

11.21 PRISONERS, By Jurisdiction - 30 June 2000
Sex	NSW	Vic.	Qld	SA	WA	Tas.	NT	ACT in ACT	ACT in NSW	Aust.(a)
NUMBER
Males	7,971	2,970	4,224	1,224	2,876	370	620	74	142	20,329
Females	576	183	258	75	248	20	15	10	13	1,385
All prisoners	8,547	3,153	4,482	1,299	3,124	390	635	84	155	21,714
RATE PER 100,000 ADULT POPULATION
Males	325.4	164.3	314.1	214.4	401.9	212.9	838.6	62.9	120.8	280.3
Females	22.9	9.7	18.9	12.6	34.7	10.9	23.2	8.3	10.8	18.6
All prisoners	172.0	85.4	165.5	111.5	218.4	109.1	458.1	35.3	65.2	147.7
(a) Full-time prisoners sentenced in the ACT are held in NSW prisons. The ACT in NSW figures are a subset of the NSW figures and are not separately counted in the Australian totals. Source: Prisoners in Australia, 2000 (4517.0).

The proportion of prisoners who were unsentenced increased from 13% in 1990 to 17% in 2000. Some of the factors which have influenced the size of the prison population over this period include legislative changes affecting the length of time prisoners spend in prison; the abolition of a sentence-reducing mechanism such as remission; significant court delays leading to an increase in unsentenced prisoners in some jurisdictions; an increase in Australia's population as well as an increase in the amount of recorded crime. Graph 11.22 shows a time series of the rate of adult prisoners per 100,000 adult population. The rate has steadily increased since 1990.